Living pools of bubbling metallic protoplasm, steel oozes are usually found deep underground, feeding on veins of ore at warm depths. Mining expeditions that encounter them are typically ignored unless they carry metal—the more refined the better. Steel oozes are dangerous and can cause tunnel timbers to burn and collapse, and deal a great deal of damage to mineworks just by their presence. Some variants live above ground, in desert or tropical mountain ranges made of ore-bearing stone.

On PorphyraDwarves on Porphyra call steel oozes zarg na Feraku- the blood of Ferrakus- and treat them with a kind of holy dread, though they attempt to dispatch them as soon as they are found with a dwarven recipe for liquid ice and sling stones. A steel ooze killed with cold becomes a metal slag that has many uses, kept secret by dwarves. The deep tunnels below Argentum in Creeper’s Rift, and most of the Underdeep are where steel oozes lurk.